Ireland to get its own supercomputer list

The Irish500 Supercomputer List at www.irish500.org , will be updated bi-annually with the first list being made public in November 2013. The project will now enter a phase of public engagement including a call for participation from users and maintainers of Irish HPC installations.

Although Ireland has grown over the last two decades into a high end centre of excellence in the IT sector with most of the major multinational IT companies having a strong presence, the country has not until now maintained any record of the level and type of supercomputers which are based on the island of Ireland. Now for the first time a formal list is being completed based on the same standards employed by www.top500.org, which has been tracking the fastest supercomputers globally for 20 years.

The Irish500 list will be maintained by an independent group of computer science researchers representing several Irish institutions including UCD, DCU and the College of Computer Training (CCT). It will also have an international perspective with representatives from Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland.

Speaking of the launch of the project, Dr. Brett Becker, of CCT stated: "The development of an Irish supercomputer ranking list is a fundamental first step in highlighting the place Ireland occupies in terms of high performance computing globally. It will help Ireland continue in its role of attracting the highest calibre of companies, people and funding in global IT. It will create quite a few ripples in international terms since as a country Ireland is punching far above its weight when compared to other countries with much larger populations."